Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
The corona virus hit Western society like a Biblical plague — almost. Biblical plagues were actually much more devastating. Still, as Peter Leithart describes the present situation, it is a judgment from God, because the disease itself together with our political solutions brought about a social situation that fits Deuteronomy’s…
“The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” - Richard Dawkins One cannot be a Christian college president or seminary trustee (your essayist is both) without wondering if Richard Dawkins’s notorious take-down of theology…
Nearly every church that I am aware of has adopted differing practices since the recent virus scare began. Some churches continued to meet during the state lock downs, and other churches left their building empty, meeting online through various video conference technologies. Some churches have gone back to life as…
Fear is an inseparable companion of human life. We are afraid of illness and death, poverty and cataclysms, rejection and betrayal, failure and shame. We are afraid of the unknown, so in a sense we are afraid of the future and life itself. Unless we live in the illusory belief…
In the title above, I put the word “heresies” in quotation marks because I would prefer that the word “heresy” be confined to erroneous beliefs about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, rather than be used broadly to describe any view that might be considered an error. 1 At…
I’ve been trying to work out why I’m feeling existentially disconnected from CoV-19-related fears. I’m taking it seriously, but it’s not registering in any deeply personal way. Partly it’s that my routines are largely undisrupted. But as I reflect on people’s reactions I think there’s more, because a lot of…
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In the time of the New Testament, Judea was a multi-lingual region. Aramaic was the common speech among Jews; but most had at least a smattering of Greek, could hear Latin spoken all over Jerusalem, not to mention Hebrew in certain settings. Linguistically, first-century Palestine was far more like Switzerland…
Curtius also has an excursus on numerical composition in the patristic and medieval period. 33 was a favorite structuring device - Augustine’s Contra Faustum has 33 sections, as does Cassiodorus’s Institutione . Verse in 33 stanzas was popular, and “Nicholas of Cusa provided in his will that 33 old men…
Why would Barr, Saussure, and others think that speakers and writers have only the present meaning of a word in mind? Does it perhaps have something to do with the fact that they have only the present sense in mind? As the previous post showed, this is hardly a universal…
We’re consistently told by contemporary commentators and theorists of hermeneutics that etymologies ought not be used in biblical studies. One text says that it is “always dangerous” to interpret etymologically. There are at least two reasons for this: 1) Word meanings change, and so the original or historical meaning of…
INTRODUCTION This section of Proverbs departs from the two-line structure used through much of the book. Instead, these proverbs run to at least two, sometimes several verses. Verses 17-21, for instance, constitute a single section. Verse 18 is connected to verse 17 by the particle “for,” so that verse 18…
The English delegation to Dort didn’t want the Synod to condemn the view that reprobates can be regenerated and justified for a time, only to lose those benefits. The English delegation was successful; this was not among the errors rejected by the Synod. That is itself a remarkable fact, but…
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